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March 28, 2024, 09:43:09 PM

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Directors out of their time

Started by peanutbutter, January 08, 2022, 01:13:04 PM

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peanutbutter

So I just watched Uptight, set around an almost entirely African-American cast of revolutionaries in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of MLK (both as part of the plot and the film came out months after his death).

The film is pretty good, where the narrative doesn't totally work is made up for by a pretty great cast of largely fresh faces but the one thing that was pretty important to know in advance is that it was by 40s noir director Jules Dassin and almost all of the film was shot in a style you'd expect from him except in colour. Without knowing that I feel like a massive chunk of the film would've felt awkwardly unnatural given the context of the source material. It's kinda odd how weird it does feel tbh, considering Rififi was only about 10 years prior so it's not like he was a total write off or anything but it just doesn't feel like a world a 40s director should exist in.

Anyways, it got me thinking of films by a director set firmly in a setting that seems totally at odds with where you associate that director. Can be the setting itself, or the techniques involved, or the cast, whatever.
Can also list really bad attempts of older directors to try and remain with the times too.


Fat City:
I think it's the Conrad L Hall cinematography and how clearly it seems to capture a type of 70s grit I'd never remotely consider alongside the guy who done the Maltese Falcon. He'd still be making (often quite good) films for another 15 years but none feel as weirdly disconnected with how I think of Huston.

greenman

Soon after as well he did The Man Who Would Be King, a lot of which feels like it could have been done 20 years before although I think that works in its favour, allows it to draw you in much more to the story as a bright adventure slowly building up the grimness.

PlanktonSideburns

Was watching 1st matrix the other day, had the sort of casting,  throughout and with little fanfare that a marvel film would not shut the fuck Up about if it included just one of.

George White

Just watched VIncente Minnelli's last film, A Matter of Time, starring Liza and Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Gabriele Ferzetti.
It's weird. Coproduced by some Italians and American International Pictures in one of their bids for the mainstream, but it feels like an Italian mockbuster of a Hollywood musical. It still feels like just another Italian b-film AIP have imported.
It'd make a good double bill with Wilder's Fedora, or triple with Aldrich's the Legend of Lylah Clare.

dissolute ocelot

Robert Bresson's penultimate film The Devil, Probably (1977) which feels like a bizarre attempt by the elderly Bresson to get down with the kids by portraying them all as existentialist death-obsessed Hamlet types (it followed Lancelot du Lac, about which you can say many things but it's certainly not down with the kids; and I've not seen his last film L'Argent, which sounds a more conventional crime picture). Even being in colour feels weird after the brilliant black-and-white cinematography of his classics. Overall it's not bad, but it's certainly not an explanation of post-68 French youth.

It all makes Antonioni's attempt at teen rebellion, Zabriskie Point, seem the pinnacle of New Hollywood Cool.

Keebleman

Going in the other temporal direction, it's bizarre seeing the director of Superman and the Lethal Weapon films credited as helming numerous anodyne US TV shows of the 60s, including The Banana Splits.

George White

Samuel Fuller's last directing credit was on a HTV Tales of the Unexpected knockoff based on Patricia Highsmith stories - Mistress of Suspense.

Ant Farm Keyboard

#7
Quote from: dissolute ocelot on January 10, 2022, 07:56:22 PMRobert Bresson's penultimate film The Devil, Probably (1977) which feels like a bizarre attempt by the elderly Bresson to get down with the kids by portraying them all as existentialist death-obsessed Hamlet types (it followed Lancelot du Lac, about which you can say many things but it's certainly not down with the kids; and I've not seen his last film L'Argent, which sounds a more conventional crime picture). Even being in colour feels weird after the brilliant black-and-white cinematography of his classics. Overall it's not bad, but it's certainly not an explanation of post-68 French youth.

It all makes Antonioni's attempt at teen rebellion, Zabriskie Point, seem the pinnacle of New Hollywood Cool.

Bresson was fascinated with For Your Eyes Only, and spent years telling everyone he'd meet that the ski chase was the pinacle of cinematographic writing. Just check the final minute of this interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnFqvRVFENs

Regarding blatant attempts at staying relevant at all costs, the end of Otto Preminger's filmography is filled with weird entries, starting with Bunny Lake Is Missing in 1965: Hurry Sundown (Michael Caine in a southern drama), Skidoo (Burgess Meredith on LSD), Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, Such Good Friends, Rosebud, and The Human Factor (which has the best reputation of the bunch).

William Wyler made The Collector (Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar) in 1965, it's as disturbing as William Powell's Peeping Tom, and quite unexpected from Wyler.

Jacques Rivette made a musical, Up, Down, Fragile.

And Paul Schrader spent a few years in the wilderness, with Dominion (a prequel to The Exorcist for which Schrader had been hired after John Frankenheimer's death but was ultimately shelved and reshot by Renny Harlin), The Canyons (the much hated collaboration with Bret Easton Ellis starring Lindsay Lohan and pornstar James Deen), and the mostly-known-because-the-entire-cast-and-crew-disowned-it-due-to-studio-interference Dying of the Light.

Herbert Ashe

Quote from: Ant Farm Keyboard on January 12, 2022, 11:58:13 PMJacques Rivette made a musical, Up, Down, Fragile.

Is this an outlier though? The next part in the Duelle-Noirot series was going to be a musical (and Noroit is on the way), he clearly loved old Hollywood musicals, it tied in with his interest in theatre/performance/play.

Fair enough if you mean in terms of doing it in the 90s though. Likewise Alain Resnais' musicals, although I'd suggest they also make sense in terms of his later career.

George White

Preminger's Rosebud was allegedly script-doctored by Roy Clarke.
Yes, that Roy Clarke.
He had to make the British characters' dialogues more authentic.

Keebleman

Quote from: Ant Farm Keyboard on January 12, 2022, 11:58:13 PMWilliam Wyler made The Collector (Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar) in 1965, it's as disturbing as William Powell's Peeping Tom, and quite unexpected from Wyler.


He should have stuck with The Thin Man films.

Ant Farm Keyboard

Well, I had totally forgotten his proper first name, as I almost never think of him outside the Pressburger collaborations, for which there's no need to dissipate any ambiguity over which Powell it is.